Much like going to the doctor for an annoying ache or pain, many people put off seeing a financial planner or even doing the small tasks involved in getting their own finances together.
Though these two behaviors may not seem to have much in common, they do.
What people are putting off is expected bad news. Why they put it off is because they are afraid of what they might find out.
Much like their health, people tend to put off getting a true picture of their finances because they expect that they are going to hear something scary and something that they wish they hadn’t heard. So they find it easier to avoid the subject completely which is, with both finances and health, the worst thing you can do.
According to Richard Cayne, financial planning consultant with Meyer International, “Many people don’t like to think about this stuff, because it makes them uncomfortable. People want to wait. It’s like feeling a pain in your body and not wanting bad news from a doctor. People put off getting their finances in order because they assume it’s gonna be bad or painful news,” he said.
What You Should Do
Richard Cayne suggests that if you don’t wait to hear bad news from a financial planning consultant like himself that you take care of matters sooner rather than later. “If you wait,” he said, “it could be really bad news later.”
If it feels scary, he suggests taking small steps to get your finances in order as soon as possible.
Call up your student loan provider and ask them if a lower repayment rate is possible. Many student loan companies will do this if you agree to have your monthly payment automatically debited from your account.
Or perhaps you can finally cross “start saving for retirement” off of your to-do list by making an appointment with the Human Resources team at your company. You’ll feel better once you finally enroll in that pension or 401(k) you’ve been meaning to find out more about.
The short of the matter is, with your health as with your finances, though it may be scary, the sooner you know the news, the more time you have to take care of it.
By the time you are sitting across a big desk from a doctor or financial planner, you might be in a position that is far more difficult and costly to get out of that if you’d just started on it a bit earlier.
For further information about getting your finances in order and other investment topics, Richard Cayne and Meyer International can be reached at (+66) 02 611 2561
